Making Crude Oil from Pig Manure

[Martin]

http://www.belleville.com/mld/bellev...e/14449289.htm

ILLINOIS STYLE: UI researcher makes crude oil from pig manure

DAVE ORRICK
(Arlington Heights) Daily Herald

HAMPSHIRE, Ill. - Can the other white meat's manure make black gold?
They say you can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, but University of Illinois researchers are working some interesting magic at the other end of the animal.

"We are the first to actually do this," professor Yuanhui Zhang says proudly of his team's ability to turn swine manure into crude oil. He's a bio-environmental engineer at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has led the 10-year research project that recently announced a breakthrough in porcine petroleum.

That neat trick may sound crude.
But it also sounds good to a pork industry swamped with oceans of swine manure, and it sounds like the national anthem to those looking to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

A typical pig produces about 6 gallons of waste a day.
For a hog farmer like Pat Dumoulin of Hampshire, who has about 1,200 sows, that's enough stinky and potentially hazardous fumes that he has a pair of 500,000-gallon tanks to properly store the stuff.
Like most farmers, much of the manure from Dumoulin's hogs winds up as fertilizer.

"Most of the farmers in our area are open to taking the hog manure," says Dumoulin, whose farm has been in his family for more than 50 years. "Sometimes it's done for no cost, sometimes they pay us a fee to spread it on their fields."

Either way, scientists have agreed for years that the chemical and capital potential of pig manure, like almost all organic waste, could have other uses.
Zhang's breakthrough wasn't that he and fellow researchers had become excrement alchemists; in about 1998, he figured out how to convert some of a pig's byproduct to an energy source. Turning garbage into natural gas, cow manure into fuel for power plants, and even fast-food grease into auto fuel are other examples of recent advances in the sub-field of icky-but-renewable energy.

Zhang's big breakthrough is that he's designed a more efficient process: a continuous reactor. Instead of converting hog waste one batch at a time, Zhang's lab, which is funded in part by the Illinois Pork Producers Association, has developed a method to feed waste continuously into a reactor, which is essentially an industrial-strength pressurized oven. And, Zhang boasts, "We don't even need pre-drying."
Chemically, pig dung isn't as different from oil as one might think. In Zhang's reactor, a process known as thermochemical conversion partially breaks down hydrocarbon molecules that make up most of the excrement, and voila: porky petrol.

Similar but not identical to the black gold it took Mother Nature eons to brew, Zhang's fuel behaves like diesel.
Now the plan is to move from the lab to a full-sized pilot reactor on a farm somewhere Downstate. Zhang predicts the process could get 3.6 gallons of crude oil a day out of each pig. Illinois brings some 7.2 million hogs to market each year and the nationwide industry is about 100-million hogs strong.

Theoretically, the resulting millions of barrels of crude a day could make a significant dent in America's dependence on nonrenewable, and often imported, oil.

But converting the nations automobile fleet to hog-oline isn't what Zhang or the hog industry is thinking about right now. No research has been done into how many current commercial vehicles could run on the fuel.

[Swiss Miss]

I'm sure there is a lot of these "alternative gas" experiments going on lately with the rise in gas prices... Most of it doesn't seem very realistic to me though. I mean, if this were really taken seriously and some company decided to go through with this, how many pigs would it take to get enough sh!t to cover the country's demand for gas/energy? And another thing I wonder is how will they go about converting the existing cars to take this type of "fuel"?

I don't know... at the end of the day, it's still sh!t. I don't see Americans lining up for it.

[Martin]

I believe there are soooo many alternatives that we could use but our big oil companies out there wont allow it. They want to manipulate the oil prices on their own and dont want anybody screwing up their profits.

I've heard of 3 really good inventions lately..

#1 converting coal into a fuel source. (which they already have factories for this out west..i believe it is Idaho..or somewhere around there)

#2 converting corn into ethynal

#3 this pig manure story.

And there are probably so many other techniques we could use to create our own fuel sources here... But who controls the gas stations? The oil companies.. I saw a recent interview on 60 minutes..and they didnt even seem to care about the alternative sources.

Doesnt this drive you guys nuts? They want us to ONLY use their oil, so that we have to pay an arm and a leg for gas. These new alternatives above would need alot of funding.. And i think we should give it to them now.. but who will pay for this funding and who will approve it? Bush right? He has his ties to the oil companies, so he doesnt care either.

Heck, If everybody grew corn in their backyard we would never need imported oil anymore... they would just need to work on creating those car kits for every car to run on ethynal.

[waltky]

Other alternatives than pig manure...

The alternatives to alternative energy
Sept 12, 2007 - Entrepreneurs look beyond solar and wind, to algae, giant kites, lightning

Chances are that Louis Michaud is one of very few people who spend their days trying to make tornadoes. A year ago, the retired petrochemical engineer put together what looked a bit like a high-tech kiddie swimming pool. Only rather than splashes, this pool tends to generate twisters about as high as the garage.

Michaud is shopping this prototype around to energy companies, hoping to get funding to build a tornado pool the size of a sports arena. The plan is to use warm air expelled by, say, the cooling system of a nuclear power plant, to create tornadoes that stretch up to 9 miles high, spinning turbines to generate electricity. Michaud figures that such a tornado could generate as much power as a nuclear plant, though he allows that his idea is "the type of thing that's outside the norm."

But as the nation hunts for ways to reduce both pollution and U.S. dependence on foreign oil, outside the norm is exactly where many entrepreneurs are poking for inspiration. With prices for traditional fuels still riding high, it's more economically feasible to pursue potential energy sources that might otherwise appear to be "way out there," from algae and huge kites to lightning bolts.

More The alternatives to alternative energy - BusinessWeek Online - MSNBC.com

[waltky]

Tapping asphalt for thermal energy...

New energy uses for asphalt
Mon Dec 31, 2008: If you've ever blistered your bare feet on a hot road you know that asphalt absorbs the sun's energy. A Dutch company is now siphoning heat from roads and parking lots to heat homes and offices.

As climate change rises on the international agenda, the system built by the civil engineering firm, Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV, doesn't look as wacky as it might have 10 years ago when first conceived. Solar energy collected from a 200-yard stretch of road and a small parking lot helps heat a 70-unit four-story apartment building in the northern village of Avenhorn. An industrial park of some 160,000 square feet in the nearby city of Hoorn is kept warm in winter with the help of heat stored during the summer from 36,000 square feet of pavement. The runways of a Dutch air force base in the south supply heat for its hangar.

And all that under normally cloudy Dutch skies, with only a few days a year of truly sweltering temperatures. The Road Energy System is one of the more unusual ways scientists and engineers are trying to harness the power of the sun, the single most plentiful, reliable, accessible and inexhaustible source of renewable energy — radiating to earth more watts in one hour than the world can use in a whole year. But today, solar power provides just 0.04 percent of global energy, held back by high production costs and low efficiency rates. Solar advocates say that will change within a few years.

Other renewable sources have drawbacks: Not every place is breezy enough for wind turbines; waves and tides are good only for coastal regions; hydroelectricity requires rivers and increasingly objectionable dams; biofuels take up land once used solely for food crops. "But solar falls everywhere," says Patrick Mazza, of Climate Solutions, a consultancy group in Seattle, Wash. Compared with other energy sources, "solar comes out as the one with the real heavy lift. It's the one we really need to get at," he said. Ooms' thermal energy system is actually a spin-off from attempts to reduce road maintenance and costs.

MORE

[waltky]

If they could only figure a way to convert the plastic back to petroleum...

Floating rubbish dump 'bigger than US'
February 04, 2008 - IT has been described as the world's largest rubbish dump, or the Pacific plastic soup, and it is starting to alarm scientists.

It is a vast area of plastic debris and other flotsam drifting in the northern Pacific Ocean, held there by swirling ocean currents. Discovered in 1997 by American sailor Charles Moore, what is also called the great Pacific garbage patch is now alarming some with its ever-growing size and possible impact on human health. The "patch" is in fact two massive, linked areas of circulating rubbish, says Dr Marcus Eriksen, research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, founded by Moore.

Although the boundaries change, it stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California, across the northern Pacific to near the coast of Japan. The islands of Hawaii are placed almost in the middle, so piles of plastic regularly wash up on some beaches there. "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup," Dr Eriksen says.

"It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States," he says. The concentration of floating plastic debris just beneath the ocean's surface is the product of underwater currents, which conspire to bring together all the junk that accumulates in the Pacific Ocean.

More Floating rubbish dump 'bigger than US' | NEWS.com.au

[waltky]

Wonder if biofuel contrails will contribute to global dimming?

Branson's 'Nutty' Idea To Power His Jets
Feb. 24, 2008 - Virgin Airways 747, Powered By Blend of Biofuels, Flies to The Netherlands

Virgin Flight 811P took off from London Heathrow this morning fueled, in part, by 150,000 coconuts and babassu nuts picked in the Amazon rainforest. The Boeing 747 touched down safely 40 minutes later in Amsterdam. This was either a milestone in aviation history on a par with Lindbergh's first solo crossing of the Atlantic, or it was a cynical public relations stunt. It depends on how you look at it. "This is the first stage on a journey towards renewable fuel," Virgin's founder Richard Branson told hundreds of journalists gathered to watch the take-off. "It's the equivalent of those exciting first few steps by a baby."

There was a carnival atmosphere: Free bagels and back rubs in the Virgin hangar at Heathrow for the press. Branson, ever the showman, posed with a coconut. But environmentalists were not impressed. "This is a greenwash," Leo Murray of the pressure group Plane Stupid told us. "It is designed to send a message out to the public that it's OK to continue flying because a 'technofix' is just around the corner."

What does today's flight prove? Only that biofuel can work at 25,000 feet -- it won't freeze at 30 degrees below zero. But as Branson said, this is a baby step. Only one of the 747's four engines was powered by a biofuel blend – 20 percent biofuel and 80 percent conventional aviation fuel. There are some bigger steps that must be taken before biofuel is used for vacations. First up, a sustainable and viable source of biofuel must be found. Corn, palm oil or coconuts are not the answer: Rainforest is cleared for their production or they compete with traditional agriculture and take up land that is needed to grow food.

More ABC News: Branson's 'Nutty' Idea to Power His Jets

[waltky]

Granny says is good on flap-jacks too...

Indian research body promotes sweet sorghum as bio-fuel
Monday 18th February, 2008 - India has a naturally smart crop in sorghum (called jowar in the country) that is capable of producing both food and fuel, a top scientist of the country's premier crop research organisation has said.

Only a smart crop that provides 'food as well as fuel' can resolve the global debate on whether the bio-fuel revolution is causing imbalances in food security systems, William Dar, director general of the Hyderabad-based International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), told IANS. Through its 'BioPower' strategy, ICRISAT is developing and promoting sweet sorghum as a major feedstock for bio-ethanol. 'The time has come to ensure that only smart bio-fuel crops are developed and utilised so that they can link poor dry land farmers to the bio-fuel market without compromising on their food security or causing environmental damage,' said Dar.

'Smart crops are those that ensure food security, contribute to energy security, provide environmental sustainability, tolerate the impacts of climate change on shortage of water and high temperatures and increase livelihood options.' Sorghum is a kind of grass, mostly used in India as fodder plant and eaten in hilly and semi-arid areas. Sorghum is the 'fifth most important cereal crop grown in the world' and used as food in Africa and South Asia.

Sweet sorghum is a cane-like plant with high sugar content. Sweet sorghum thrives under drier and warmer conditions than many other crops. Most sorghum species are drought and heat tolerant and are especially important in arid regions. 'Sweet sorghum is a carbon dioxide neutral crop (low carbon emission), which is a big contributory factor of being called a smart crop,' ICRISAT says. One hectare of sweet sorghum absorbs and emits 45 tonnes of carbon. Sweet sorghum generates 8 units of energy for every unit of fossil-fuel energy invested, which compares favourably with sugarcane and corn.

More Indian research body promotes sweet sorghum as bio-fuel

[waltky]

More on sorghum as biofuel...

Sweet Sorghum Sap May Trump Corn As 'Potent' Biofuel
May 14, 2008 - Sweet sorghum is grown in the U.S. for cooking and livestock feed. But the tall plant also might help at the gas pump.

A sugary sap inside the plant's stalk, which grow as tall as 12 feet, can be turned into a potent biofuel, and experts and companies are studying its potential with hopes that farmers will want to plant more of it. Ethanol made from the stalk's juice has four times the energy yield of the corn-based ethanol, which is already in the marketplace unlike sweet sorghum. Sweet sorghum produces about eight units of energy for every unit of energy used in its production. That's about the same as sugarcane but four times as much as corn.

"I think it can be a piece of the puzzle" as a biofuel crop, said Danielle Bellmer, executive secretary of the Sweet Sorghum Ethanol Association and an Oklahoma State University researcher studying ways to improve stalk pressing and fermentation methods. "The real issue is it's just not a well-known crop." Currently about 10 million tons of grain from the tops of the plant's stalks are harvested in the U.S., the world's leading grower, but most of the sugar from the stalks goes to make syrup that people use to pour on biscuits, cook, and feed animals.

One company, Global Renewable Energy LLC, hopes to change that. It has planted two 20-acre plots to conduct tests with an eye toward using the plant for ethanol production. "The purpose of those are obviously the testing, but we want to bring farmers and investors out," said Ray Coniglio, a spokesman for the Sebastian, Fla.-based company. Sweet sorghum growers in South Texas and South Florida can get two crops a year because of their tropic-like weather. The crop, though, can be grown as far north as Canada. It grows in dry conditions and tolerates heat well.

In Texas and Florida, the second crop doesn't need to be planted; it sprouts from the first harvest. "We've found the contents are as good as the first crop," Coniglio said. Sweet sorghum also spares the environment. Less fertilizer is needed than with corn and as a result there is less water contamination, Coniglio said. Sweet sorghum differs from grain sorghum, which is grown on about 100 million acres worldwide. Sweet sorghum could be grown on about half of those.

MORE

[waltky]

That pig manure is flowing down the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico...

The Gulf's Growing 'Dead Zone'
Tuesday, Jun. 17, 2008 - The American Midwest is essentially the granary of the world, supplying corn, wheat and other crops to markets from Chile to China. But all that food doesn't grow by itself.

In 2006 U.S. farmers used more than 21 million tons of nitrogen, phosphorus and other fertilizers to boost their crops, and all those chemicals have consequences far beyond the immediate area. When the spring rains come, fertilizer from Midwestern farms drains into the Mississippi river system and down to Louisiana, where the agricultural sewage pours into the Gulf of Mexico. Just as fertilizer speeds the growth of plants on land, the chemicals enhance the rapid development of algae in the water. When the algae die and decompose, the process sucks all the oxygen out of the surrounding waters, leading to a hypoxic event — better known as a "dead zone." The water becomes as barren as the surface of the moon. What sea life that can flee the zone does so; what can't, dies.

Since 1990 the dead zone, which begins in summer and lasts until early fall, has averaged about 6,046 sq. mi. But the threat is growing. A study released last week by scientists from Louisiana State University (LSU) and the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium estimated that this year's dead zone would be more than 10,000 sq. mi., roughly the size of Massachusetts. But that prediction was made before massive floods hit the Midwest: with the flow of the Mississippi at dangerous levels, and with rains sweeping fertilizer off drowned farms, the dead zone could grow even bigger. The Louisiana fishing industry, the second largest in the nation, is already hurting, with shrimp catches falling in the dead zone's wake. The U.S. is not alone in grappling with this aquatic byproduct. As modern, chemically intensive agricultural practices spread around the globe, so does hypoxia; a 2004 U.N. report documents nearly 150 dead zones globally. But none compare to the black hole in the Gulf of Mexico. "This year would be the largest since we've started keeping records," says R. Eugene Turner, a zoologist with LSU who led the modeling effort. "It's definitely getting worse."

In response to the growing problem, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — along with several other federal groups and the governments of states that feed into the Mississippi — released a plan of attack on Monday to reduce the Gulf's dead zone. The plan, an update of an effort launched in the waning days of the Clinton Administration in 2001, looks to harness state and federal action to reduce the flow of fertilizer into the Mississippi, much of which comes from agricultural sources that aren't covered by the regulations of the Clean Water Act. The ultimate goal is to shrink the size of the dead zone, averaged over five years, to 1,930 sq. mi. or less by 2015 — considerably smaller than the 7,900 sq. mi. the zone reached last year. "This plan has greater accountability and specificity [than 2001]," says Benjamin Grumbles, the EPA's assistant administrator for water. "This is urgent."

More The Gulf's Growing 'Dead Zone' - TIME